It’s like these steel Japanese wings in the MMO combat simulator War Thunder were probably folded a few hundred times to achieve the above glitchy result. Glorious katana wings!
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20 responses to “Glorious Katana Wings”
Ramming was a widely used tactic during WW2 air combat, and several aircraft had reinforced wings specifically for the purpose of using them like in the picture above. If it’s a bug, it’s an accurate one.
As you gain experience, you can purchase upgrades like reinforcing the body structure. So not really a bug.
Yeah, but not exactly indicative of WWII aircraft or combat from the era, either, which runs counter to the authenticity they’re going for here. Yeah, some aircraft had reinforced wings for particular flight profiles and weapons loads and yes, some airman did use ramming as a tactic, often in desperation, as it would nearly always result in critical damage (though not always), or destruction of one or both aircraft. But no aircraft in service had their wings strengthened for the specific purpose ramming aircraft. See, they had these things called guns– machine guns and cannons. :p
It’s got to be fixed, because one of the big issues I see with players of the game is the constant use of ramming, which is annoying as shit. It’s akin to the way some players run straight out or head first into gunfire with no regard for self preservation. Now, if they can exploit ramming at little or no expense similar to the gif above, it’ll make ramming even more annoying.
Most ‘ramming interceptor’ type aircraft never made it into service, that’s true. The American XP-79B was cancelled as the advantage in the war turned to the Allies and it was easier to field conventional interceptors, and the Zeppelin Rammer (made by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, not designed to ram zeppelins) got the mass prototype stage before the factories were destroyed late in the war.
Ramming was successfully used by the RAF against the V-1 flying bomb, where damaging one of the surfaces on the V-1 was enough to drop it from the sky. They were looking at reinforcements for the purpose before they found they could overload the gyros in the V-1 by moving the interceptor wing beneath the V-1 surface as close as a few inches so the airflow would force the surface up and send the bomb into a death spiral.
The Russians had aircraft with wings additionally reinforced for ramming though. The I-16’s wings were initially reinforced to fix weaknesses under high stresses, but the plane was heavily outclassed by the Germans and the Russians were forced to turn to taran attacks to compensate. In particular, it was a widely used tactic against German heavy bombers when the I-16 ran out of ammunition, which happened frequently because they were loaded with very little in the first place to keep up maneuverability. They added additional lightweight reinforcements along the leading edge of the wings to improve survivability when used to ram bomber wings.
It wasn’t the favoured method, of course, but low ammunition loadout was required to maintain maneuverability to survive against German fighters to get close enough to attack the bombers in the first place, and it was difficult to successfully take down a bomber with the amount of ammunition available. And of course, what’s shown in the GIF above wasn’t how the attacks worked either – the goal was to destroy the control surfaces, not to sever the entire wing =) But it was nevertheless a real strategy aided by reinforcing for the purpose, used to successfully down about a hundred German bombers over the course of its use. Taran attacks declined later in the war not because the tactic was excessively dangerous, but because German bomber attacks declined as air superiority shifted to the Allies.
… Folded? Is that something you can do in the game or something, change your planes engineering by folding it or something?
No no, don’t explain. One sentence is probably more than enough :3
Joke referring to Katana blades.
I know you said dont explain, but whatever :-p When katanas are made, the metal of the blade is folded back over itself hundreds of times which makes them incredibly strong. So strong that they can cut through almost anything. Like the wings of a plane for instance.
Ahh cool, lol thank you I was being sarcastic anyway xD
thats a widely quoted myth japanese steel wasnt folded hundreds of times to make katanas at most it was folded 8 to as many as 16 times on its self if you folded steel hundreds of times the sheer lack of carbon left would make the steel so brittle you could break it by hand. And the old katanas are some kind of magical uber sword that could cut through anything is ludirous you try and cut through stuff with a katana your more likley to snap it clean in half so stop watching movies like highlander for your swordsmithing facts lol
Well i watched a documentary on it. obviously they were wrong (not being sarcastic). The old school Katanas were pretty damn tough though and could cut through a heck of a lot of things. The one made during WW2 though were poor quality as not all the blacksmiths had the knowledge or skills to do it right and were more brittle than the words of old…
Alot of the katanas wielded by officers in WW2 where passed down through families and where the real thing
Somewhat. If you were a rich or influential family, you likely had an heirloom katana of extremely high quality. The blade would be refitted with modern military furniture and scabbard. Even among the officers this was fairly rare, but highly admired.
WWII era Katanas aren’t inferior because of any kind of ‘lost technique’. Modern metallurgy had improved the quality of Japanese steel, precluding the need to repeatedly fold the blade to remove carbon. They were typically made of 3-5 layers of steel, fused together in the same way as old (but using modern tools like hydraulic presses), primarily because it was quicker and cheaper; and necessary because Japan quickly realized it needed an ongoing supply of weaponry to keep their forces equipped. As such, you will likely find blades made before and during the early stages of WWII are made using the ‘old ways’.
There were some unforseen consequences to the new methods. Despite their advances modern metallurgy did not produce quite the same quality of steel as repeatedly folded pig iron. The thicker layers and shorter fusing period (each fold exponentially increases the bond strength of the previous layers) meant the blades were vulnerable to fracturing between layers. Nonetheless Japanese officers used them to surprising effect, alongside infantry charges with affixed bayonets during the Pacific War, against Allied forces whose tactics were unprepared for melee fighting. It was only though entrenched positions and massed repeating weapons like the M1 Garand and Thompson submachine gun that Allied forces were able to reliably counter Banzai tactics.
Actually the folding thing is a myth. People fold pig-iron to reduce the carbon in the steel to a more optimal level (when pig-iron is made, the carbon content is way to high to make any use of the metal). For Japanese swords, I heard that most were folded 4 to 16 times tops – they just SAID they were folded 100s of times to impress unwary customers. In reality, folding steel hundreds of times would reduce the carbon content of the steel to such low levels, it wouldn’t be of much use anymore.
Think it was more that they folded and folded and folded..each time the number of total layers doubled..fold it 10 times and you should have 1024 “folds”…
katanas are also incredibly easy to break. Hardly a strong sword, ottomon steel claims that title last i checked?
The blade portion of a katana is easy to break, but that’s a necessity. With steel you can have hardness (which makes a good cutting edge) or strength but not both. That’s why katanas were made from two different pieces of metal. The main shaft of the blade was made from softer, high tensile steel that made it good for blocking, while the cutting edge was made from hardened steel that preserved its sharpness but made it chip and shatter more easily.
It wasn’t that common to break a properly made katana blade all the way through, but it was more common for the cutting edge to break. That was by design though, as the katana was a slicing weapon, not a hacking weapon, and it was never designed to go up against plate armour so it didn’t need significant penetration.
I can’t find anything on ‘ottoman steel’ in particular, but if you’re looking at Turkish weapons then you’re probably talking about the iconic kilij, a curved cavalry blade. It was made with crucible steel, which had very high tensility (it was very difficult to shatter or break) but very low hardness, meaning it deformed much more easily. The lack of hardness made it ideal as a cavalry blade because the speed of the horse behind it required it to hit with high force, but the ease with which it could deform made it less useful as a ground melee weapon, and regardless of how it was used it usually needed to be reforged afterwards.
damascus steel is what your thinking of and it was very strong the actual method was lost to time modern metalurgist and smiths have tried to recreate the method with only limited success
you’r very close, the ottomons made some very good weapons and from what we’ve learned in history its even possibly done by accident.
Theres also a great video explaining the katana and proper use of it somewhere, the light wrist paint brush movements are described as the best method over anything else as its all that it takes to break it is not much.
And crossing blades in a battle? forget about it.
its nice seeing a community that is informed about its historical blades :3 the closest thing to that concept of folding hundreds of times are forge welded Damascus steel blades that contemporary blacksmiths make.
Here is a video about forging a Katana.
The blade is made from lots of small pieces of steel “welded” together by hammering.
The folding starts at 17:30
About a dozen folds make at least 5000 layers.
at 19:00 it shows how they made the inside of the blade of softer iron and the outer edge of hardened steel.
But it’s worth watching the whole video.
I myself commissioned a genuine Katana Wing in Imperial Japan for 24000000 yen (thats about $200,000) and have been practising with it for about 2 days now. I can even cut blocks of other people’s wings with my katana wings.
Japanese plane makers spend years working on a single wing and fold it up to a million times to produce the finest wings known to mankind.
Not one single mention of Stalinwood? Obviously the sovoks are selling their secrets!